The present invention relates generally to virtual reality worlds wherein the user can navigate in the three-dimensional space which is continuously displayed and in particular to a system for continuous display and navigation in a virtual reality world.
Virtual reality worlds with three-dimensional spaces are used in many applications such as virtual electronic malls, dungeon and dragon games, etc. In such worlds, the three-dimensional description of objects and space takes substantial size in the system storage, which size causes delay upon loading of a three-dimensional, virtual reality space when needed.
The tools currently used in the virtual reality applications are browsers using the Virtual Reality Modeling language (VRML). This language defines the nodes Anchor, Inline and Lod. Anchor is hyperlink to another space which can apply to large spaces but not in a continuous way. Inline allows to embed continuous three-dimensional spaces but not large ones and Level of Details (LOD) is a mechanism to load spaces according to distance of the viewer from them. The problem with such tools is that the whole world must be loaded in advance, which is not possible for very large spaces due to network bandwidths, memory limitations and computation power.
Another system, Portal and Zones, is a trial to give a robust solution to continuous navigation by dividing the universe into boxes and loading the next box as the user gets close to it. The problem is that such a system requires prior analyze of the whole space to find the division into boxes.
Therefore, there is a need for a continuous navigation as opposed to the standard solution today which is to define hyperlinks between parts of the world, loading each part upon entering it, which causes delay and discontinuity in the space.
Accordingly, the object of the invention is to provide a system allowing continuous navigation in large three-dimensional spaces by incrementally loading elements of the virtual reality, attempting to load elements prior to their use, by anticipating the movements and actions of the participants in the world.
Therefore, the invention relates to a system for continuous display and navigation in a virtual reality world comprising display means, a server, a computer including browsing means for communicating with the server and storage means for storing a plurality of files defining three-dimensional spaces which are displayed on request of the browsing means. The computer further comprises virtual reality managing means for, upon receiving coordinates of the current viewpoint of the user from the browsing means, directly requesting to the user appropriate files the selection of which is based upon on an evaluation of which three-dimensional space will be most needed and loading these appropriate files into the browsing means for displaying the three-dimensional space.
According to an important characteristic of the invention the virtual reality managing means include means for allocating a particular part of a first three-dimensional virtual space such as a virtual hallway to be used as element of combination of the first three-dimensional virtual space with at least a second three-dimensional space and means for adjusting either or both of first and second three-dimensional virtual spaces when they are combined thereby achieving an illusion of one continuous space.